"A
powerful and uniquely slanted coming-of-age film
about the troubling sexual awakening of a young
boy in a sleazy setting."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski
("Moonlighting"/"The Nude"/"Walkover") brilliantly
directs this creepy, disturbing and quirky
coming-of-age film as a black sex comedy. It's written
by Skolimowski, Boleslaw Sulik, Jerzy Gruza and Helmut
Jedele. The dreary tale is set in a London public
bathhouse (filmed at Munich’s Bavaria Studios).
Seemingly out-of-place is the hipster background music
of Cat Stevens and the German band The Can, but it
sounds good.

The socially awkward working-class 15-year-old Mike
(John Moulder-Brown), a high school dropout, gets his
first job as an attendant in the Newford bathhouse.
The virgin is infatuated with the 23-year-old more
worldly sexy redheaded co-worker attendant Susan (Jane
Asher), who shows him the ropes and informs him the
bathhouse is a place of fantasies for their
clients--something that should help him with tips from
the older women clients. The go-go boot wearing hottie
recognizes the teen has a crush on her and gets
pleasure playing the part of a cock-teaser, but fails
to realize how emotionally twisted is the lad. Her
promiscuous lifestyle, where she sees her
fiancé (Christopher Sandford) and is having an
affair with Mike's sleazy married former swimming
instructor high school teacher (Karl Michael Vogler),
puts him in a snit as he obsesses over getting into
Susan's pants and eliminating the competition.

Mike's frustration in trying to win her over leads
to the sicko kid stalking her, pawing her in the
movie, stealing her poster he discovers on the site of
a Soho strip club, as he continually sabotages her
personal relationships by making himself a pest. It
ends in tragedy.

Despite the main characters being unsympathetic,
this is a powerful and uniquely slanted coming-of-age
film about the troubling sexual awakening of a young
boy in a sleazy setting. The raw performances
resonate, while the unsentimental tale makes you
squirm. Even though it didn't catch on with the public
in its theater release, despite for the most part
being critically praised, this film is worth checking
out for its uncompromising storytelling. Deep End
offers a compelling twist on 'kitchen sink' realism by
telling us that matters of love are unpredictable and
are not the be all and end all, as are many of
cinema's coming-of-age love stories.